Free My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk Page B

would demand my portion of the inheritance and then abandon them and return to my father with the children, they, too, weren’t eager for a judge’s decision proclaiming my husband’s death. If, in the eyes of the judge, my husband wasn’t dead, I naturally couldn’t wed Hasan, nor could I marry anyone else. Because this dilemma bound me to that house and that marriage, my in-laws preferred my having a “missing” husband, and the continuation of this vague situation. For lest you forget, I saw to all their household chores, I did everything from their cooking to their laundry, and furthermore, one of them was madly in love with me.
    When my father-in-law and Hasan grew dissatisfied with this arrangement and decided it was time for me to marry Hasan, it was necessary first to arrange for the witnesses to convince the judge of my husband’s death. Thus, if my missing husband’s closest kin, his father and brother, accepted his death, if there was no longer anyone who objected to declaring my husband dead, and if, for the price of a few silver coins, witnesses would testify that they’d seen the man’s corpse in the field of battle, the judge would also oblige. It would be most difficult to convince Hasan once I was declared a widow that I wouldn’t leave the household, demand my inheritance rights or ask for money to marry him; and moreover, that I’d marry him of my own free will. Naturally, I knew that to gain his trust in this regard, I’d have to sleep with him in a very convincing manner so he’d be completely assured I was giving myself to him, not to get his permission to divorce my husband, but because I was sincerely in love with him.
    With some effort, I could’ve fallen in love with Hasan. He was eight years younger than my missing husband, and when my husband was at home, Hasan was like my little brother, and this sentiment endeared him to me. I liked his humble and passionate demeanor, his pleasure in playing with my children and even the way he desirously looked at me as though he were dying of thirst and I were a glass of cold sour-cherry sherbet. On the other hand, I also knew I’d really have to force myself to fall in love with a man who made me wash clothes and didn’t mind my having to wander through markets and bazaars like a common slave. During those days when I’d go to my father’s house and cry endlessly as I stared at the pots, pans, bowls and cups, during those nights when the children and I would sleep cuddled up together in solidarity, Hasan never gave me cause for a change of heart. He had no faith that I could love him or that this essential and mandatory precondition for our marriage would manifest itself; and because he had no confidence in himself, he acted inappropriately. He tried to corner me, kiss me and fondle me. He declared that my husband would never return, that he would kill me. He threatened me, cried like a baby and in his haste and fluster, never allowed time for a true and noble love to be born. I knew I could never wed him.
    One night, when he tried to force the door of the room where I slept with the children, I rose immediately, and without a thought that I might frighten them, screamed at the top of my lungs that evil jinns had entered the house. This fit of jinn-panic and screaming awakened my father-in-law and thereby exposed Hasan, whose excited violence was still visible, to his father. Amid my ridiculous howls and inane rantings about jinns, the staid old man to his embarrassment acknowledged the awful truth: His son was besotted and had inappropriately approached his brother’s wife, a mother of two. My father-in-law made no reply when I said I wouldn’t sleep a wink till morning, keeping watch at the door to protect my children against “the jinns.” The following day, I announced that I’d be returning to my father’s home with my children for an extended stay to care for him in his time of illness; thus did Hasan accept his defeat. I